Stop Stealing Our Shit.

TattooMule.com needs its ass kicked. Today I found out that the leeches who own this “tattoo resource” (ha!) website have been stealing work from my friends at Inkslingers in Newcastle Upon Tyne, from their blog. The morons didn’t even bother to remove the watermarks.

Well, I write that blog, and I make those watermarks, so it’s freaking personal.

TattooMule is one of those crappy websites which are made specifically for window lickers to steal artists’ work from, or for lame customers with no imaginations to get “ideas” from. There’s no need for it, it’s pathetic.If you have a look around, you can see they’ve even taken pictures from other tattooers, such as Uncle Allan, Cris Cleen, and Thomas Hooper. Those were just the names I could be bothered with!

The bastards even have the cheek to have this page:

I think you’ll find that this is the best resource for Tattoosday UK Tattoos, not that anyone has been lame cool enough to get one. Don’t piss me off.

Look, I know this is the Internet and nothing is sacred or whatever, but is this honestly how things are going to be, now? It used to be that tattooers were great if they could draw, not if they could trace images from Google. The rule used to be that you could only tattoo flash directly from tattooers who aren’t alive anymore, but now stealing work is common practice between thick fuckers. Customers used to come into studios with cool ideas, now they bring in their shitty little mobile phone with someone else’s shitty little tattoo saved on its tiny screen. What happened?

It sucks for tattooers, because the options available seem to be either upload photos and have their stuff stolen and ripped off constantly, or don’t upload anything at all and rely on nothing but word of mouth for their custom, which these days is impossible when the crap studio down the road has a full online portfolio and you have nothing. Why can’t there be an option where tattooers upload their work, and people respect that it belongs to that person only? What’s with all this new crap where people open up crappy websites that make tattooing look cheap and stupid, that operate as a freakin’ Argos catalogue for unimaginative biffs? I get that tattooing is “popular” right now, but websites like this are crap, dishonest and are run solely to generate a few pence a go from advertisements.

Really, there’s a part of me that just wants to point out to anyone online who doesn’t know much about tattooing that TattooMule.com has sod all to do with tattooing, and that if you’re honestly looking to find a picture of someone else’s tattoo to have as your own, you are not ready for a tattoo. Have a think about it, then come up with your own ideas. Or just get a skull, skulls are cool.

Websites like this are utter bollocks, and anyone who takes them seriously should be stabbed in the knees for their own stupidity.

tattoo jackass still steals my work, but now it’s impossible to pretend it came from anywhere but my site for most things. I’ve had people find me that way, for a change…given that I earn about half my income selling art online, it’s been a good thing to watermark. and it might be the only solution I have found that actually puts a stop to this. Great post, thank you for writing this.

Hey, thanks for reading!
You’re absolutely right, and not long after I published this post, we started using watermarks on the blog for every photo. I don’t work for Inkslingers anymore, but I hope that the guys there learned to watermark as much as possible! You’re right though- even if someone crops the photo, you have the original one with your name on, which is good enough I reckon!
I think that your post hits the nail on the head and it’s really great to see I’m not the only one who gets lazy and uses paint sometimes- but it goes to show how easy watermarking is!
By the way, your Alkaline Trio picture in that post is freakin’ awesome ;)
Thanks for the helpful comment!